Growing up, I was never allowed to cry. Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!! People joke about saying this to their kids, but I actually heard it from people who meant it. So the good thing about that is that I learned very early on to self-soothe, but the bad thing is that I was taught that crying is a thing of weakness. It’s something that pathetic people do.

From there, I went on to live a pretty emotionless existence on through college and my twenties. Turns out, you can’t suppress only negative emotions, you have to suppress all of them. Because crying generally is not just something that you do when you’re sad. It’s something that happens when you are overwhelmed with any emotion at all. So, if any reader out there is still wondering why my first marriage didn’t work out… voila. It is really hard (I would argue, impossible) to be wholly in love with someone when you are suppressing all of your emotions. It’s not psychology rocket science.

What’s worse, not only did I live an emotionless existence, but anyone who displayed these emotions I would judge pretty harshly. Not out of jealousy, but because it was just so… pathetic. People who cry? Weak. People who publicly express their love? Gross. Impassioned people who shout and argue and become enraged? Get a grip.

Oh I was so incredibly wrong. Real people who live full lives enjoy a full range of emotions from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. And what’s seriously cool (or annoying) about me is that I had suppressed highs and lows for so long that anything outside of a standard deviation from neutral makes me cry. All the time. I cry when I’m happy, sad, mad, empathetic, grateful, fearful, touched, or generally overwhelmed in any other way. I’ll just call it over-correction for all those years lost.

So what did I cry about in 2013??? Let’s talk about what I didn’t cry about in 2013… and I’ve never been so happy in my whole life.